Aug 16, 2007
A whopping big development: the "big boy" hotel chains are now renting non-hotel accommodations in competition with themselves
This one needs a bit of background. It's obvious that more and more Americans have discovered and decided that they can pay far less than hotels charge, and yet enjoy more spacious surroundings, more privacy, by electing to stay on vacation in apartments, condos, cottages, villas and vacation homes.
(A friend just returned from two weeks in London, where he and his family occupied a two-bedroom apartment in the center of that city for less than they would have paid for a single hotel room).
Two weeks ago, the giant Wyndham Hotels (at least 7,000 properties marketed under several brands) launched a website called Endless Vacation Rentals (www.evrentals.com or www.wyndham-vacations.com) to represent no fewer than 60,000 apartments, condos, vacations homes, villas and cottages in America and around the world -- the largest inventory of that sort on the internet. I interviewed the chairman and CEO of that new Wyndham operation on my Sunday broadcast of July 29, and unsuccessfully tried to get him to reveal the secret background reasons for doing this. It's obvious that the big boys in hotels have now decided that non-hotel lodgings are going to play an increasing role in vacation travel.
So now there's a humongous website from which to obtain such non-hotel lodgings -- a site larger than VRBO.com, larger than Rentalo.com, larger probably than all the others put together. You book a non-hotel on that site exactly as you would a hotel, giving them your credit card number. And thereafter your contact is with, and rights are against, not the individual owner of a condo, bungalow or cottage but the enormous Wyndham megalith. Will wonders never cease.
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(A friend just returned from two weeks in London, where he and his family occupied a two-bedroom apartment in the center of that city for less than they would have paid for a single hotel room).
Two weeks ago, the giant Wyndham Hotels (at least 7,000 properties marketed under several brands) launched a website called Endless Vacation Rentals (www.evrentals.com or www.wyndham-vacations.com) to represent no fewer than 60,000 apartments, condos, vacations homes, villas and cottages in America and around the world -- the largest inventory of that sort on the internet. I interviewed the chairman and CEO of that new Wyndham operation on my Sunday broadcast of July 29, and unsuccessfully tried to get him to reveal the secret background reasons for doing this. It's obvious that the big boys in hotels have now decided that non-hotel lodgings are going to play an increasing role in vacation travel.
So now there's a humongous website from which to obtain such non-hotel lodgings -- a site larger than VRBO.com, larger than Rentalo.com, larger probably than all the others put together. You book a non-hotel on that site exactly as you would a hotel, giving them your credit card number. And thereafter your contact is with, and rights are against, not the individual owner of a condo, bungalow or cottage but the enormous Wyndham megalith. Will wonders never cease.
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: accommodations
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
